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Voice of the Day

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”

– Leonardo da Vinci

A New Short Story by Junot Díaz

The Book Bench
Loose leafs from the New Yorker Books Department.
This Week in Fiction: Junot Díaz
Posted by Cressida Leyshon

This week’s story, “Miss Lora,” marks the return of Yunior, who last appeared in the magazine two years ago, in “The Pura Principle.” In that story, Yunior’s brother, Rafa, has recently been diagnosed with cancer. “Miss Lora” takes place shortly after Rafa’s death, when Yunior is still dealing with “a fulgurating sadness” and also sleeping with his neighbor, an older woman. Back in 2010, did you know that you were going to write this story?

My brother’s cancer—what I used to call his exile to Cancer Planet—it’s one of those fractures in my past that I keep returning to. Very boring for readers, I’m sure, but all artists have their chronotopes, these time-spaces we keep circling, and this happens to be mine. But yes, I knew I would write “Miss Lora.”

Actually, I tried to write this story first but it just wouldn’t stick, and so then I wrote “The Pura Principle.” What really sparked me was that I was hanging with a group of my boys, they asked me what I was working on, and I told them—this older-woman thing—and a few of them started talking about their own experiences in high school. Two of them had been in similar situations, even lost their virginities to older women.

They were proud of what happened, too, a serious notch in their masculine belts. This type of impropriety was not as uncommon as one might imagine, not in a Caribbean community like the one I grew up in, where boys were encouraged toward a hypermasculine ideal, where the line between adults and minors was not as safeguarded as it should have been. Anyhow, this alarming conversation got me back on track. Ignited the work.

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Springsteen Revives “American Skin (41 Shots)” for Trayvon Martin

A song that continues to be, as relevant as ever.

Ozzie and Cuba

As a baseball fan I could not avoid following the “controversy” regarding Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen and his alleged comments expressing love and admiration towards Fidel Castro.

As is generally the case with any political figure that is considered hostile or an enemy by the US government, the US corporate media falls right in line.

The remarks made by Guillen were taken out of context by the TIME magazine reporter that interviewed him and the rest of the media, of course, ran with it.

Guillen did not make a political statement in support of Fidel Castro.

The mistake Guillen made, a senseless and avoidable one, was not saying what he actually said, but rather choosing to say what he said knowing what the political climate in Miami is regarding Castro and the Cuban Revolution and knowing that his comments would result in a vicious backlash against him. Guillen knows the Cuban community in Miami very well and he is aware of their hatred towards and vilification of Fidel Castro.

It was foolish on Guillen’s part to even mention Fidel Castro in any manner that is not negative. Guillen knows, that is completely unacceptable to the media and Cuban community in Miami but he still chose to do so.

There’s another aspect to the story.

I’m always fascinated or actually amused by the selective outrage of the media.

Ozzie Guillen is the latest example.

On the one hand, the media strongly condemns Guillen for making, in their misrepresentation of the facts, an admiring comment about Fidel Castro but yet Guillen’s homophobic and sexist remarks, which he’s made over the years, have not resulted in the same level of outrage and moral indignation from the media, let alone any calls for his firing.

Sadly, those type of bigoted statements are still socially and politically acceptable in the US and allowed under the concept of free speech.

However, the topic of Fidel Castro and Cuba, remain in a different free speech category all of its own that apparently, is not so free after all.

Why are English and American novels today so gutless?

Why are English and American novels today so gutless?

The great Bengali thinker Rabindranath Tagore, born 150 years ago, was a passionate political author. Sadly, literary writers today seem to have no time for politics

The past sometimes shames us. At least, visitors this weekend to Dartington Hall in the south Devon town of Totnes must have come away feeling taunted by history. Because while the festival they attended was celebrating the life of Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali artist and thinker born 150 years ago, it also cast a shard of light on a gaping, and usually unremarked upon, hole in today’s culture.

You glimpsed it every time a musician performed one of Tagore’s songs urging fellow Indians not to give up their struggle against British rule, and you confronted it directly in discussions of the poet’s political and social campaigning. Because what his legacy draws attention to is a creature so rare in today’s culture as to be semi-endangered: the political author.

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The Power of Music